STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Oct. 12 (UPI) -- Two U.S. economists will share the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics for their analysis of economic governance, the Nobel Foundation said Monday.
The organization of cooperation in economic governance by Elinor Ostrom demonstrated how common property can be managed successfully by associations, the foundation said in a release. Oliver E. Williamson developed a theory where business firms serve as structures for conflict resolution.
The foundation said Ostrom's and Williamson's contributions "have advanced economic governance research from the fringe to the forefront of scientific attention."
Ostrom, a U.S. citizen and the first woman to win the economics prize, is the Arthur F. Bentley professor of political science and professor at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind. She also is founding Director of the Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity at Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz.
Williamson, a U.S. citizen, is Edgar F. Kaiser professor emeritus of business, economics and law and professor of the graduate school at the University of California in Berkeley, Calif.
